vivarium | CALHOUN HOUR

It's another day, it's another start of Calhoun Hours. Bright and early in the morning, Calhoun marches into the middle of the first floor lobby and shrieks into his megaphone.

"All right, up to the Garden with all of you! C'mon, hurry up, I'm not going to wait for you lazy bunch!" He impatiently taps on his paw on the ground, but then stops. "Hmm, actually, nah, take your time. I'll just meet you all there in a jiffy!"

And with that, he rushes off to take the stairs to the Garden. Listen to him and slowly make your way, or rush up, it doesn't matter. After everyone assembles in the artificial room, Calhoun is standing by the waterfall, staring off into nothing. He just nods to himself a few times and doesn't even seem to notice the presence of the test subjects though. It's not until about ten seconds later that he turns and tilts his head.

"Whoa, don't sneak up on me like that, test subjects! Sheesh, trying to give this mouse a heart attack?" He huffs but then slides back to his regular mood. "So! Today's event will be called camping! Yeah, I got no clever name for it, sue me, but whatever, go set up a tent or other prep-work. I couldn't bring in all the supplies for this so you'll just have to make due until later tonight."

He runs away from the waterfall, but manages to trip on nothing a few steps in. He stays on the ground, as if trying to trick everyone that he's going to stay there for a while, but then pushes himself back up to make his way to the centre of the Garden. He then raises his arms out, as if he's presenting something.

"Even though I didn't manage to grab everything, I hope you like what I did to the place! Sure looks like a real campground, huh?" Asides from a few tent kits scattered around, there... isn't actually much at all. A few of the screen grids (that normally display the sky) are either turned off to a boring black colour or in a constant static display, but asides from that, everything looks exactly the same. Calhoun doesn't seem to really care though as he keeps on talking.

"Soooooooooooooooooooo, get to it, or something. Do whatever you test subjects do during events like these, chip chop chap!!"

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"No kidding." Heiji looked a bit uneasily at the staticky screens. "If Calhoun was real, I'd wonder if he was crackin' up on us. But the last time he gave us a bunch of supplies and ran, we had to dodge robots."

"...Let's try and make sure Clive's all right. He can't run in his condition."

"Maybe he's playing some part." He watched Calhoun for a moment, wherever the heck Calhoun was now. "... it really doesn't seem so, though. I guess it's hard to tell with him."

Sigh. "Whatever the case you're right, Clive's in no condition to defend himself from whatever's coming. I can probably carry him slowly from place to place but if it comes to running away I'm not sure how helpful I'll be."

"I don't think he is. He's been too spacy lately; somethin' is going on, and I think it's only a matter of time before we find out what." Of course, it would be awful nice if it was the police, come to rescue them...

"I can carry him, too, but it's not gonna be an ideal situation if it goes on for hours like that last one. And Sasuke and I are still injured..."

"The way the warehouse is reacting has me the most worried. Do you think something's wrong with whatever systems run this place?" This time he casted his worried look to the malfunctioning grids. "I'm not sure what we can even do if power starts failing or something like that."

And he nodded. "Maybe Jake will be willing to carry him if need be. They seem to have an uneasy truce right now, though a truce nonetheless. Other than that-" He rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm not really sure how many people here can carry him easily. Ema, possibly, maybe Snake. Alfendi's clearly out."

"I'm actually surprised it's lasted this long without any major malfunctions," said Heiji. "The memory technology, too. Complex systems have a lot of moving parts. Programs freeze up, mechanical parts fail. The fact that we haven't been seein' a lot of those failures so far is one of the reasons I thought there had to be several people running things here. But if the power's out... I wonder."

He looked at his bracelet. "Calhoun can control these things without physically touching them, yeah? Meaning that he's got some way of transmitting a control signal to these things to get it to inject us or whatever he wants. If those transmission systems were no longer active, we'd just be lugging bits of dead metal around with us."

"I think it might be prudent to refuse any memory regains from this event. I shudder to think the sort of complications a malfunction could cause." Imagine all the Alfendis they could end up with. Horror.

"Possibly..." He sounded uneasy. "But the test to find out such a thing is far too risky. If there are malfunctions even Calhoun trying to soporil someone could be dangerous." He gave Heiji a dry look. "Not that anyone would be foolish enough to test Zero in such a way." They never did that ever. Not even once.

The entire warehouse is Alfendis. Everyone yelling about pizza and Hershel's nectar.

"'Course not," said Heiji blithely, not that he'd ever tested Calhoun before. Gracious now. Then again, they hadn't exactly punished the person who'd pushed Akiko into the cafeteria, had they? So maybe if they disguised it to look like an altercation...

"Though he might react in some other fashion. Like sendin' his robot goons in to break up whatever we got started."

I wonder if they'd all get along or murder each other.

"It's strange he's never used those robots to deal with us, isn't it?" Hershel mused, crossing his arms as he continued to try to track whatever the heck Calhoun was doing. "They must have some measure of control over them, yet they don't seem willing to use that resource. Maybe it's a weak point."

He was honestly wondering if trying to use one of the blindspots to discuss things would be a good idea now that Calhoun seemed so distracted. Kind of risky though. "Also I can't honestly tell if not being given much in the way of supplies for the campfires is another oddity or simply Calhoun being unpleasant."

Why not both? They could cheerfully murder each other while aggressively shouting about how Hershel was the most attractive teenager in the warehouse.

"Maybe that's what he's plannin' on bringing later. Along with somethin' real unpleasant," said Heiji. "Considering how he gets about us breaking things, you'd think it'd be the first thing he'd show up with!"

Another thing -- if they broke off more of the trees, they'd have to deal with ninja Treebeard...

"I guess them robots don't work all that well, either. A bunch of them, anyway. They seem good with simple directions, like chewing on Alfendi, but a lot of the meat-sniffing ones looked pretty broken-down. The Bluebells... I dunno. Great if you wanna maim someone."

CALHOUN HOUR - CAMPING

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